Sex And The (Small) City

I’m experiencing that rare time in person’s life where I’m about to hit a milestone (30 yrs old) and there is absolutely nothing tying me down. I have no career, no morgage, no debts (except for my government debt re: uni), no children, no husband, no extremely close friends, nothing.

With so many facets up in the air I would have to say I’m feeling extremely vulnerable. The choices I decide to make in the next 6-7 months will literally change my life; I’ll no longer be in life limbo.

I am realising now that even the small task of finding somewhere new to live might have huge implications on how my life changes.

This afternoon I was being driven around by my boyfriend – he was showing me his side of town. I was considering moving towards him so that perhaps we could see each other more often in between his running around like a crazy person.

We stopped outside the unit I was considering renting. I can’t really remember how we came to it, but suddenly he was asking me if I would be comfortable living where we’d stopped if we ended up splitting. It is, after all, a new area, new places, new people and I have anxiety.

Immediately (because I have been watching it recently) I made the comparison between myself and Carrie from the TV show Sex And The City. That moment when Carrie tells Mr. Big that she would move to Paris with him and his reaction to that is, “you’d be moving there for you” and she says “well why the hell would I move there if it wasn’t for you” or something along those lines.

I went rather quiet, thinking what the hell I was doing – why was I considering uprooting everything that I found easy and comfortable just to be closer to a man I’ve only been seeing as a boyfriend for about 5 months.

Inevitably we started to have that conversation; the “where exactly is this heading” conversation. Ironically I don’t really remember a lot of what was said but I do remember uttering the words of “what do you want from me?” There was nothing aggressive about what I was asking – I just wanted to know. I was sort of pinning this move on there being some sort of future between us and I expressed how I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.

Of course I know where my boyfriend is coming from – he has plans, goals, that don’t involve a “partner” of sorts just yet – and neither of us are all caught up in rings, marriage and all of that stuff.

It’s just this crossroads I find myself in where I could easily see myself jumping into something like being my boyfriends other half in life because there is nothing else for me to do – but I suppose that’s where I’m wrong.

As I expressed in my first paragraph – I have literally nothing holding me down. There are no roots. Why am I focusing on this one thing?

Because it’s easy – because it involves another person that might make decisions for me. I’m falling into an old pattern – relying on someone outside of myself to make my life interesting, someone else to take the reins and for me to inevitably be pissed off by it a few years later.

Thankfully our little talk didn’t really mess anything up. I suppose the one thing I can rely on is the love we have for each other. He made the effort for the rest of the time we spent together to treat me with the same amount of love I usually receive, possibly to make sure I knew nothing had changed and I still mean the world to him – which I appreciate.

I know I could sit around and wonder if I should stay with him, but that isn’t the right question I should be asking myself.

Instead I’m going to sit around and ask myself how to turn my talents into a career, how to change my social anxiety so that I can connect with other lovely people like myself, how I can be comfortable no matter where I live to drive over the other side of the city if I need to and back again.